1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to communication systems and more specifically to systems and methods for accommodating non-voice communications.
2. Relevant Technology
The plain old telephone system (POTS) or public switched telephone network (PSTN) has been in development since the late 1800's. In general, the term PSTN may mean any medium of communication in which at least part of the link is analog, and not digital, in nature. The PSTN was first developed to allow for person-to-person communications by voice over long distances. The PSTN was designed for calls between people who can both hear and speak, and was designed to handle voice sounds.
Deaf and speech impaired persons cannot readily use the PSTN to place or accept standard voice calls. In the 1960's TTY, or TDD, was designed and adopted by many deaf persons. The TDD is a type of modem and is a “text telephone” which can send typed text characters across the PSTN. TDDs encode text characters with a five-bit Baudot code, while most modems and desktop computers in the United States today use an ASCII encoding, also known as the ANSI X3.4-1977 or ASCII-77 encoding. TDDs transmit/receive at 45.45 bits per second and use frequency shift keying modulation/demodulation at frequencies of 1400 and 1800 Hz.
TDD callers are not able to communicate directly with voice telephones and will often use a relay service. The relay service provides an operator who receives the text call and provides a voice read of the text. Relay services are effective, but substantially slower than real time text communication.
Many people have access to desktop and laptop computers that are in communication with the internet and can easily support text communication. There are also new types of devices that support text communication such as alpha pagers, PDA's (personal digital assistants), wireless devices, and other internet capable devices. However, these devices are unable to communicate with a voice telephone.
Furthermore, many organizations today do not support TDD calls to most voice telephones in the organization. TDD calls are not recognized as voice calls. Thus, incoming TDD calls may not be received or cutoff prematurely.
It would, therefore, be an advancement in the art to provide a system and method for notifying a voice telephone of an incoming text call and providing text communication. Such a system and method are disclosed and claimed herein.